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Comment on Malleable Software in the Age of LLMs (2023)parent

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If you don't have clarity of thought, no intelligence in the world can help you.

I disagree.

Moronic people in positions of power are often in this situation. So far this has worked out well for the moronic powerful people: as long as they can convince intelligent people to work for them, they get to be moronic, powerful, and successful. This strategy has been working for them (as a group) for several millenia.

I think this is why the "LLMs will evolve into God In My Pocket" story gets so much traction. To a moronic person in power this sounds a lot like everyday life, but with computers cleaning up their messes instead of humans. It is totally plausible to them.

Maybe it's getting into semantics but clarity of thought does not necessarily mean accurate understanding of reality (which is usually messy and complex), so moronic people could ironically have more "clarity of thought" than non-moronic people because they tend to have simple beliefs (these X people are good, but those Y people are bad).

That sounds less like helping the person overcome their problem and more like secretly demoting them into a figurehead while the devious Grand Vizier actually steers things.

I don't want my tools to work that way. Especially since the not-so-assistant may be making decisions to favor its parent-corporation.

Once you were in the hands of a Grand Vizier, you were dead. Grand Viziers were always scheming megalomaniacs. It was probably in the job description: "Are you a devious, plotting, unreliable madman? Ah, good, then you can be my most trusted minister.”

-- Interesting Times by Terry Pratchett

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